The three finalists to become the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools auditioned for the job Wednesday.
They did private one-on-one interviews with school board members, and they also sat in the hot seat, one at a time, and took questions from a panel of principals and a separate forum of parents and teachers.
“I’m not anti-charter, I’m anti bad schools,” said Dr. Peter Licata when asked about his position on school choice.
From school choice to teacher salaries to their personal experiences, the candidates fielded a variety of questions.
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Luis Solana, currently an administrator in the Detroit public school system, talked about his time in Miami-Dade as the principal of Norland Senior High School.
“Miami Norland was one point away from being an F school, and over the work that we engaged in collaboratively, we transformed that school into an A school,” Solana said.
Dr. Sito Narcisse is the current superintendent of schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was asked about allocating resources fairly among schools.
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“Deerfield has a very different set of needs that Parkland, right, or Parkland from Pembroke Pines, yes all kids need to learn, but what they come to the table with is different,” said Narcisse.
Licata is an assistant superintendent for Palm Beach County Public Schools. He said he’s committed to raising teacher salaries.
“Broward County currently is a B, Palm Beach is an A, it’s a buyer’s market for teachers, what separates Broward from the other counties is someone’s interested in being a teacher, why would they come to Broward County?” Licata said.
A parent asked him, “How will you protect educators and their livelihoods from politically motivated attacks on their instructional practice?”
“Schools are not places for political attacks,” Licata responded. “They shouldn’t be, we’re here to educate, we’re educators, we’re not lawyers, we’re not politicians.”
But when another parent asked him how he would uphold the Parental Bill of Rights law, which allows any parent to object to a book, which as we’ve seen, can lead to books being removed for every child, Licata said the district would uphold the law if he was superintendent.
“I’ve read it probably 300 times, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, I think it’s just parents wanting to be involved in their child’s education.” Licata said.
For some school board members, that response could be damaging since he did not acknowledge the national controversy over that law.
The school board will make its choice Thursday.
